The Cathars were not Christians nor did they belong to any monotheistic religion because they believed in more than one God. From William Hemsworth:
The Cathars were dualists who believed in two gods. One who created everything good and another who created everything evil. Essentially they believed that the god of the Old Testament was Satan, and the New Testament was the God we know. As they did with the Eucharist, they didn’t hold to the validity of any sacraments because the sacraments involve some kind of material. In their view all material is bad.
The human body was an evil construct because in entrapped angels in human flesh. Therefore anything to do with the human body was also deemed evil. Even procreation. Suicide was seen as a good way of escaping human bondage. Yes, they were opposed to the Eucharist as the Gnostics of old were. Their beliefs were dealt with by great saints such as St. Augustine and St. Irenaeus. Again I emphasize that they were not protestants that were persecuted by the Catholic church, but believers in type of modified Gnostic heresy. (Read more.)
Read more about the Cathars in my novel The Night's Dark Shade.
There is a tendency among Protestants to claim various individuals or groups as forerunners of Luther and the Reformation, when these supposed forerunners were in fact Catholics or some unrelated dissident group. I haven't personally seen them do this with the Cathars, but it wouldn't surprise me.
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